I Wish You a Merry Christmas

Recently, at the end of the local boardgame club meeting, everyone wished each other Merry Christmas. No one offered the artificial Happy Holidays. Now some in this group are Christians, but not all, and no one seemed to regard the greeting as offensive. It seems that except in the corporate world, Merry Christmas is still the norm here in the USA.

Now it’s not that I mind someone of their own volition wishing me Happy Holidays. It’s not emotionally healthy to take offense at something not meant in offense. I used to use the phrase myself, or attempted to be clever by offering people a choice -

A) Merry Christmas

B) Happy Holidays

- select one -

Up through Hanukkah, Happy Holidays does have the utility of covering all the bases, a general-purpose well-wishing to anyone regardless of their stripe. But after Hanukkah, there’s only one true holiday left – Christmas [New Year's is a party, Kwanzaa is a political statement]. Happy Holidays becomes a circumvention, fearful of those unhappy souls who bristle at Merry Christmas. Whatever well-meaning is intended in Happy Holidays is tainted by the bigotry that the avoidance of Merry Christmas accommodates.

This entry was posted
on Sunday, December 23rd, 2007 at 4:36 pm and is filed under Culture.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.